By Reuvain Borchardt

 

 

Rav Chaim Meyer Roth, rav of Sterling Forest, and Rabbi Sruli Fried, director of Chai Lifeline NJ, offer chizuk, guidance, and emunah in the tragedy’s aftermath

 

 

The Salt of Yissurim

Rav Chaim Mayer Roth

 

 

    We’re obviously dealing with a tremendous tragedy, of three boys being taken from us at a very young age. Everybody’s very shaken, and the whole community is trying to come to terms with it. How do we process this catastrophe and put it into perspective?

 

We all know the famous personality from the Gemara who was known to always say “Gam zu l’tovah” (this, too, is for the good) and was therefore called Nachum Ish Gamzu.

The question is, why would they call him “Gamzu?” Isn’t it missing the point? The point is that it’s for the tovah. Shouldn’t they have instead called him Nachum Ish Zuletovah?

 

The answer is that no human being can really comprehend that a tragedy is for the good. But what Nochum did was put a seemingly disastrous situation into perspective. He was essentially saying, “Who brought this tragedy about? And what does He do all the time?” We wake up every day, we have the sun shining, we have the rain to sustain us, we have beautiful grass and trees, we have families, we have food. Hashem does so much good for us!

 

So if I see Hashem primarily doing so much good, and then I see Him do something else that’s difficult to understand, I must come to the conclusion that this also is for the good. Someone Who does so much good for us doesn’t suddenly decide to do bad.

 

So the key was in the gam, also—even if it’s hard to fully feel it, once I know Hashem has done so much good, when I see Him do something else, I can say “Gam zu —Hashem also did this, and so it must be l’tovah, for the good.”

 

When dealing with a tragedy, we can’t get the proper perspective from looking only at that incident but by looking at the entire picture: all the tovah that Hashem gives Klal Yisrael, all the protection He gives us, all the times we get into cars and nothing happens to us. The same Ribono Shel Olam who made countless nissim for us in cars did this as well. This puts into perspective for us how something beneficial is supposed to come out of this.

 

This tragedy happened during Parshas Bechukosai, the parshah of the tochachah. There’s a minhag that when a person gets an aliyah for the section of tochachah, we don’t begin with the tochachah. Instead, his aliyah begins with the brachos and only then goes into the klallos.

 

In the tochachah, Rashi says (Bamidbar 26:22) that not only will wild beasts kill people, but so will domesticated animals, which generally don’t do so. I think that this story, where a deer, a seemingly harmless animal, can cause deaths like this, is an action of tochachah.

 

But we have to have the right perspective on tochachah. Tochachah is also mentioned in Parshas Nitzavim. Rashi says there (Devarim 29:12) that after Klal Yisrael heard these 98 klallos in addition to the 49 in Parshas Bechukosai, they panicked, but Moshe calmed them by saying that they had angered Hashem many times but were still around.

 

This is difficult for us to understand. Was Moshe playing down the klallos, saying you don’t have to worry about them? Of course not. What Moshe was saying is that Klal Yisrael was viewing the tochachah as “The Ribono Shel Olam is going to destroy us.” Moshe is saying, “Hashem doesn’t use tochachah to destroy you, only to build you up and make you better than before. It’s not meant to break. It’s meant to build.”

 

In Brachos 5b, Rabi Shimon ben Lakish says that the word “bris” is used in relation to both salt (regarding the requirement to bring korbanos with salt) and to yissurim.

 

The connection of salt and yissurim is that just as salting meat “sweetens” its taste and makes it better, so, too, yissurim cleanse our aveiros and improve us.

 

Salting is how they used to preserve meat. Once they washed off the salt, the meat was ready to eat and tasted good.

 

Hashem gives pain to people to help them learn things and become better and gain more brachah and good things. It’s not meant to break people but to give them a proper perspective on life.

 

So when a person sees such a tragedy, he has to gain more appreciation for life. Everybody bemoaned that teenaged boys were killed. Well, we have to look at ourselves now and ask: How many opportunities do we waste? How much of life are we using correctly? How much time do we spend surfing the internet? We have so many distractions to waste our time. If we live to be 80 or 90 years old, will we, in fact, have lived no more than a teenager because of all the time we wasted? Are we using our time for the Ribono Shel Olam and living productively?

 

If, after a tragedy like this, a person says he will take five minutes each day and make sure they are not wasted and live more meaningfully—whether he is learning or doing chessed or seeking out someone going through difficulties to cheer them up—he will have learned a proper lesson.

 

Of course, those who were not so close to the niftarim are not going through the same level of yissurim. While we are all impacted by this tragedy, most of us will forget. And it’s much easier for the rest of us to try to take a positive perspective on a tragedy.

 

But for the family and those who were very close to the niftarim, the loss is immeasurable. It’s a hole in the heart that doesn’t really disappear; you just learn how to get used to it. You do learn to appreciate the children that you do have, much more. It makes you realize what life’s about. Because if life is just about having a good time, a tragedy like this makes it very hard to continue on.

 

But people who have the right perspective can use it for growth. I can tell you for myself, as someone who lost his mother at a young age, you become more sensitive to other people’s pain. You understand people who are suffering and connect to them. You’re able to feel other people’s pain. You learn things that you couldn’t have learned otherwise.

 

Of course, nobody wants to learn this lesson, but when Hashem gives it to us, we have a choice to make. We can say that we’re going to grow from it and become better people. We can appreciate what’s important in life and go find other people who are suffering and give them chizuk. We can say, “Just like I was able to recover, so will you.” These are things a person couldn’t have done if he didn’t go through it.

 

When a person learns lessons from yissurim, he becomes a better person, and the yissurim improve us.

 

Crying with Earthly Eyes

Rabbi Sruli Fried

 

 

When Rav Shmuel Berenbaum was sitting shivah for his son, he said the following: Rashi says that Yitzchak became blind in his older years because of the Akeidah. When the malachim saw Yitzchak being taken to be slaughtered, they started crying, and their tears fell into his eyes, and he became blind in his older years because of that. The lashon that Rashi uses is “niftachu haShamayim,” the Heavens were opened, and through that, the malachaim were able to see the Akeidah.

 

Rav Shmuel asked: Malachim can see everything from one end of the world to the other—why did Hashem have to “open the Heavens” for them to see this?

 

He answered that there are two ways to look at the world. We can look at the world with heavenly eyes, in which everything makes sense. We can understand how Hashem can make an Akeidah and why Hashem should make it that three pure bachurim were taken from us as they were last week.

 

But there’s another way to look at the world: in a simple, earthly way. Where it makes no sense that three precious bachurim were snatched from us in such a horrific accident. Hakadosh Baruch Hu told the malachim that in a time when a tzaddik is about to be killed, this is not a time to look at the world with heavenly eyes. Rather, we look at it through earthly eyes. Niftachu haShamayim—I’m going to open the Heavens. You should look at this with earthly eyes and cry over the death of a tzaddik. It hurts, it’s painful, and we cry.

 

This vort is beyond powerful to validate our pain and the difficulty we have in dealing with this. In dealing with grief, people often want a silver bullet to make the pain go away, to see a silver lining here. But this is not the right approach right now. At this moment, there’s no silver lining! It’s devastating, and we need to be sad and grieve. We shouldn’t try to find ways to make the pain go away. Rather, we validate the pain, we process the pain, we be there for our children and our friends. These are normal reactions to an abnormal situation.

 

Each one of us is reeling from the petiros of Chaim Zelig Berl, Dovid Yitzchok Handler and Refoel Faham.

 

It’s hard to wrap our brains around it, to make some sense of it. It’s simply unfathomable. We can’t imagine what it must be like for the families that are dealing with it and those directly impacted, but at the same time, every single one of us in the entire community have been impacted by it.

 

I’ve been dealing with dozens of roshei yeshivah, menahelim, and rebbeim—the entire Chai Lifeline crisis team has dealt with hundreds of phone calls. We’ve never seen anything like this, something that has literally impacted every member of the community.

 

But at the same time that it’s impacted us so much, we’re being asked to be there for our children and to provide a safe space for them to express themselves, and to reassure them that the world is a safe, secure place.

 

Before we start speaking about how deal with our children, we need to keep in mind four things.

 

Firstly, we shouldn’t project our feelings onto our children. If we’re having a difficult time dealing with this, we shouldn’t assume our children necessarily are also. The place to get support is not through our teenage sons. It’s from our rabbanim, spouses, friends, family, colleagues. We shouldn’t project our challenges onto our children. Don’t assume your child is feeling as you are, and your child shouldn’t be your source of support.

 

Secondly, our children may have a totally different sense of timing and context. We may be going through a very difficult time now, but they may need us in a week, two weeks, or a month from now. They may not deal with it in the same timeframe that we do.

 

Thirdly, remember that our children are very resilient. They can deal with very difficult things, and they will be okay.

 

Finally, in such times, you don’t need professional help. Rather, what you need is to make sure that your children are surrounded by those who love them most—meaning their parents, their peers, their rebbeim—and that they have a space to talk if they want to talk, and if they don’t want to talk, they don’t need to talk.

 

With that hakdamah, now I will say three yesodos in how to deal with this:

         Yesod A) is the emotional reaction that we have to the horrific tragedy of what happened. B) is the vulnerability that we may feel at such a time. And C) is transitioning from a traumatic event, putting the pain and suffering into something productive and proactive.

1. A) There is no right way to cope or to grieve when we’re in pain.

Some of us feel afraid, and some of us feel like we’re in a dazed disbelief in which none of this makes sense. Some of us are totally stoic, and some of us act as if we don’t care. That doesn’t mean they’re not sensitive and they don’t have a heart. We each just react differently. In fact, one day we may react one way and the next day another. One day we may be in a daze and the next day we’re crying about it and the next day we’re feeling like it’s impacting us physically or impacting us cognitively and it’s hard for us to think and work and learn, etc. There’s no right way to cope. Rather, we need to validate that your reactions, whatever they are, are a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.

 

1. B) Outside of the devastation and sadness that we’re all feeling for this horrific loss, the overwhelming feeling that I’ve been seeing literally across the board is a sense of vulnerability.

These bachurium were doing things that seemingly any one of our children could be doing on a Thursday night of an off Shabbos—going out with friends, driving, going to pick up something to eat, going to learn, wanting to go to the ocean to see sunrise. These are normal daily activities that thousands of our children can be doing any given night. So when something like this happens, we feel so vulnerable, and our sense of security and our sense that we’re in control of our destiny, so to speak, is shattered.

 

This is especially true for teenagers, whose developmental challenge is independence versus dependence. To have that feeling of being vulnerable can be very overwhelming. And I think that there are four things that we need to do in order to help our children in their emotional reactions: Ventilate, Validate, Model Appropriate Reactions, and Reassure.

 

     Ventilate: Give them the space and safety for them to express themselves.

 

    Validate: Tell your child it’s a very normal reaction to feel scared in moments like this because these boys were doing something that your child could have been doing.

 

    Model appropriate reactions by showing your children that you felt the same way when you heard about it—you were in a state of shock, and then you started crying, and then you felt vulnerable. This way your children knows you feel as they feel, and that shows them that their reactions are normal and healthy.

 

    Reassure is the most important thing. We can’t promise what life is going to bring and what the world’s going to be like, but we can reassure our children that this is something that almost never happens. Boys go out to drive, and even if we get into accidents, these aren’t the results that come out of it; the world is a safe, secure place. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is constantly doing good. Let them know that Tatty and Mommy are here for you to answer any questions you have, or if you just want to talk about it. Just being able to reassure them is the critical thing.

 

1. C) Transitioning by taking the question of “Lamah—why?” and turning it into something productive and positive.

In Tehillim perek 22, Dovid Hamelech cries out, “Keli, Keli lamah azavtani?” This is commonly translated as, “My G-d, my G-d, why have you forsaken me?”

 

Rav Hirsch, however, says not to read it as “lamah—why” but as “l’mah —for what purpose?” Dovid Hamelech was asking, How do I take the most difficult questions in the world, like why three beloved boys were so tragically taken from us, and use it for a productive purpose?

 

This is a very healthy way to cope as well. We can take on a small, achievable thing to do l’ilui nishmasam, to know that the relationship with the niftarim isn’t terminated. Rather, it’s a changed relationship.

 

This is so incredibly painful, but one thing that we can still do for the niftarim and for ourselves is to take the lamah and turn it into l’mah.